This was brought to my attention by Frank Shirer who was a Sergeant in C Battery while I was there. I expect it to be of interest to any of the 2/27 alumni.

My name's Jim, but like a lot of medics, most of the time I was just Doc. That's me in the picture above, between the tower and the howitzer, practicing my specialty of looking stupid. I still remember when I got to Friedberg, riding in a Mercedes Benz bus and going past that beautiful ancient tower. I've spent most of my life in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, a city with a rich history by United States standards. That tower was old when William Penn first had the idea of starting a city in the "New World", and it fit perfectly with the image of old Germany that I had in my head when I enlisted with a gaurantee to go to Germany.

The bus dropped me off at Brigade headquarters, and after what seemed like forever, someone from our battalion finally showed up to take me "home". I was still tired from the long trip, jet lag, and the simple fact that I like to sleep a lot. I had seen the Gamma Goat written up in Popular Science or Mechanics Illustrated, and I thought it was pretty cool. I was still green enough to think that if a vehicle had been designed to be amphibious it would in fact be amphibious. I actually thought that since we were supposed to be the finger in the dike to hold back the flood from behind the iron curtain, that we would have no shortage of spare parts, and that people would take maintenance of equipment seriously. Like I said, I was greener than our uniforms. The goat that Sp4 Lord (They called him JC, I don't think I'm making him up, but I can't find a picture of him, so maybe he is one of those false memories) was driving had no muffler, and that three cylinder diesel made up for its lack of power by lacking nothing in the noise department. Well after all, a muffler isn't really that important; I took the muffler off of my motorcycle for the heck of it. They were bound to keep the important things in tiptop condition.

I think I got there on a Friday afternoon when most of the battalion was off the Kaserne somewhere firing their M-16s. So I got to spend the weekend adjusting before I actually had to go to work. I remember looking out the window at the end of the hall in HHB and seeing the track park. I asked the guy ( I don't remember if it was JC or not ) that was showing me around what the tanks were doing in our parking lot and where they kept the cannons. He patiently explained the difference between a self-propelled howitzer and a tank. Tanks have real armor, whereas the M109-A1 will protect you from kids throwing stones. Tanks are manned by treadheads, and self-propelled howitzers are manned by gun bunnies. And, just like the soldiers in the field artillery, the howitzer has a bigger gun! My education was beginning.

I was listening to Only A Game on the radio this morning (April 26, 2003), and they were talking about the Albuquerque Isotopes minor league baseball team. Apparently there had been a Simpson's episode where Homer Simpson stumbles on a plot to move the Springfield minor league team, The Isotopes, to Albuquerque New Mexico. Unbeknownst to the Simpson writers Albuquerque had recently lost its minor league team, The Dukes, and was in fact trying to attract a new team. Well Albuquerque got a team, and the citizens decided to call them the Isotopes instead of The Dukes because of the reference on the Simpson's. It says something about this country we live in when people throw away a legacy of over eighty years in favor of a pop culture reference. (Albuquerque first had a "Dukes" baseball team in 1915)

The reason I mention this here is that a reporter went around the sold out stadium on opening day, and among all the people wearing paraphernalia with "Isotopes" emblazoned on them, he had trouble finding even one person who knew what an isotope was. ( one of two or more atoms with the same atomic number but with different numbers of neutrons ) When I got to 2/27 in Friedberg, I saw all these people walking around with the unit crest and the motto "Conjuncti Stamus". It took me a few days to find somebody that could tell me what conjuncti stamus means. ( United We Stand ) I don't understand it. If I'm going to wear something with a motto on it, I want to know what it means. I don't enjoy ignorance. I've got a lot of it, but I don't enjoy it. Apparently it doesn't bother a lot of people, and that helps to explain how George W. Bush can have a 70% approval rating.

I was looking around on the web for some information on the old 2nd and 27th without finding much. I found one page from a sergeant (Frank Shirer) that was in C battery while I was in Headquarters. I had been thinking about putting some of my pictures up on the web. Seeing how sparse the existing 2/27 references were, I decided to go ahead and threw this together.

Maybe in the future when someone searches for the 2nd Battalion 27th Field Artillery, they'll find this page. Maybe they'll recognize somebody and it'll bring back some good memories. Maybe not. Whatever. If you have some information to add to one of the captions, or some scans to add to the site, or just a comment, email me jdahlgren@netreach.net

Military.com 2/27 FA Page - Not great, but there isn't an awfull lot of 2/27 stuff on the web. -
At least I haven't found much. If you know of any good sites with information about 2/27 FA, please email me so I can post the links here.
If you were in the 2/27 Field Artillery please email me so I can include your email address. That list with just Frank and myself looks awfully short.